[time-nuts] Timing Distribution in Mountainous Terrain

jimlux jimlux at earthlink.net
Fri Sep 10 05:17:51 UTC 2010


Ralph Smith wrote:
> On Sep 9, 2010, at 8:01 PM, Rick Karlquist wrote:
>> I would like to point out that the environmental sensitivities of
>> the 5071A are unmeasureable, and the measurement threshold is
>> far below 5.8E-14.  I would estimate that the 5071A (and ONLY the 5071A
>> among commercial clocks) could get the job done provided that you could
>> compare its frequency to GPS to the stated accuracy.  This would
>> be using the 5071 as a secondary standard.  You still need to
>> deal with the short term stability of the 5071A, depending on
>> your system needs.  JPL uses H masers as flywheels.
> 
> I would imagine the cost of a 5071A per radio station would make the check writers swallow hard, and adding an H Maser into the mix would really get their attention. Especially if you need redundancy.
> 

there's also the possibility mentioned earlier of using a lower quality 
standard at each station and flying (driving) a higher quality clock 
(5071) around often enough to keep them trued up.

If it's far enough in the future.. Hg ion traps have a lot of 
potential.. smaller, lower power, etc. than Cs


I think, though, that some sort of self calibrating array using the 
target of interest is a better scheme.. multiple receivers at each site 
separated by some distance.  Getting milliradian angular resolution is a 
piece of cake.



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